Barely 24 hours before former President Olusegun Obasanjo paid President Muhammadu Buhari a secret visit in his residence at Aso Villa, the immediate past president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, was also at the presidential villa on a similar visit where he met with the president behind closed doors, LEADERSHIP learnt yesterday.
Just like the meeting Obasanjo had with the president on Friday night, Jonathan was said to have also met with Buhari in his official residence on Thursday night.
Special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, confirmed the meeting between Buhari and Jonathan. He, however, did not provide details of what the president and his predecessor discussed.
Adesina had confirmed Obasanjo’s secret visit less than 24 hours after Buhari met with Jonathan: “Obasanjo came like a thief in the night, but there are no details,” he joked.
LEADERSHIP gathered, however, that at the meeting with Buhari on Thursday night, Jonathan commended the president for his effort so far in the ongoing war against Boko Haram.
A source at the president’s residence told our correspondent that the former president also took time to clarify “certain controversies surrounding issues bordering on funds allegedly missing from the federation account, how the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was administered under his tenure and state of the country’s armed forces before he handed over to him (Buhari) as commander-in-chief.”
The source who does not want to be named in print further hinted that, on his part, Buhari assured the former president that he would do the needful in ensuring that anybody who is found culpable of corrupt practices during Jonathan’s administration will face the law.
In the past weeks, there had been series revelations about how top officials, including ministers, siphoned the country’s crude oil, as much as one million barrels per day according to Buhari, which they sold and stashed the money in their personal accounts abroad.
Confirming this, President Buhari had said the federal government had started compiling some documents which indicted former ministers and other top government officials of massive fraud.
In spite of the huge amounts earmarked by the past administration and approved by the Senate to equip the military in fighting insurgency, the immediate past chief of defence staff (CDS), Air Marshal Alex Badeh under Jonathan’s government, had, at his exit ceremony, lamented that the military under his watch was ill-equipped and lacked motivation to fight Boko Haram.
Source:Leadership
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